by Sam Kench
The most violent of the trio, Ben, stood up off Mark and threw a punch into Anthony’s chest that registered no reaction. He wondered if Anthony even felt it.
Anthony took Ben's entire face in the palm of his hand and forced him to the ground with a downward shove.
Mark continued to wail in pain and clutch at his now wrong facing hand. He tried to straighten his wrist, resulting in the stomach churning click of bone-on-bone.
Adam turned tail and ran for the school's entrance. Anthony pulled the backpack off of the downed hillbilly, took it in both hands, and spun with it like one of the track-and-field hammers he loved throwing. He launched the bag through the air and struck Adam in the back. The “cousin” tumbled to the ground face first and flopped over onto his back, leaving part of his cheek behind on the pavement.
Ben grabbed onto Anthony’s leg from his lying position at his feet. He pulled a small knife from a hunting sheath at his hip and stuck it into Anthony’s calf. Spectators in the schoolyard-coliseum would go on to say that few have taken a stab wound as well as Anthony Glandow did that day. He made no acknowledgement of the blade in his leg. Instead, he wrapped both hands around Ben’s neck, jerked his head upwards, then slammed it against the cement. The hick’s eyes went dark.
Moments later, a cluster of teachers led by the vice principal finally arrived outside.
They were all suspended, Mark included. Ben's parents threatened charges against Anthony. A hospital visit revealed not-insignificant brain damage. Anthony maintained the brain damage wasn't new, they had just never checked before.
Anthony’s signature was the only name allowed on Mark’s cast. He still had the cast on his arm long after the suspension ended. He still had the cast on his arm for the funeral.
FOLLOWING THEIR FATHER'S DEATH, they stopped going to school. It seemed pointless, as did most things. They didn’t watch TV, they didn’t play games, they didn’t leave the house. Days melted away under depression as neither sibling made an effort to keep track of time. They kept the shades drawn and their ears closed to anything beyond each other and their sad internal monologues.
Aunt Kim had decided to let them stay at home until they felt ready to make the move. She had selfish reasons at heart, but convinced herself it was in their best interest. She sent them money for food and trusted them to stay out of trouble. She needed time to compartmentalize her little brother’s death, to isolate it from her needing to care for the siblings and lock it away, deep down inside.
AFTER WEEKS OF SOLITUDE, Maria began to let go of her sadness little by little, but Mark didn’t. He let it consume him. Any flicker of happiness made him angry at himself. That became his new normal. Maria had caught him, a number of times, sitting motionless on the floor, tears in his eyes, staring straight ahead at a wall, his mind off in space. The kitchen, the living room, the hallway, it mattered not where he chose to lower down to the floor. His sister thought it was meditation, or at least, she hoped that’s what it was. To Mark, it was a monastic punishment which he had begun to self-impose if he felt his sense of melancholy slipping away. He didn’t want it to leave, and all those hours spent staring at walls kept that sadness in the present..
Mark was surprised to find himself growing closer to Maria, now that they were each other’s only real family left. They learned things about each other that they had never thought to ask before. Maria learned that Mark had pipe dreams of going into politics when he got older. He wanted to represent his town, and then eventually his state. Mark learned that Maria had never found herself attracted to anyone, not even in a fleeting “crush” type of way. She didn't feel herself susceptible to infatuation, and she sometimes wondered if there was something wrong with her. The siblings spoke deeply and often in the time following the funeral, but to no one outside their two-person world.
An untracked and uncared for amount of time later, Maria finished her 11th book since their self-imposed exile began. She had always loved reading but it wasn’t until her father’s passing that she understood why people often referred to stories as escapism. She hadn’t left her bed all day, and didn’t even know how long it had been since she left the house. She had silenced the group chat she shared with her friends a long time ago, and none of them had made the effort to reach out to her individually, other than Stacey. Maria didn’t engage much with even her.
Taking a sip of the warm, still water on her end table motivated her to get out from under the covers. She passed by the living room on her way to the kitchen and spotted Mark sitting in their dad’s favorite chair: a puffy, brown-leather recliner. He had put back on the black suit he wore to the funeral. The left sleeve was tight against his blue cast.
‘Mark?’
‘Yeah?’ He replied quietly, not turning to face her.
She stepped into the living room and took a seat on the couch. He had tears down his face but had stopped crying. She decided not to ask him about the suit. They sat together in silence.
Mark stared at a slice of light on the carpet sneaking past the window shade. It shone golden with a hint of a greenish-reddish-purplish hue. Maria looked over all of their Dad’s things in the messy living room, wondering what they were going to do with them. She thought of the Christmas presents their Dad had wrapped before his passing. Should they be opened? Maria wondered, but couldn’t decide on an answer. For now, they sat in the corner under their tiny, white Christmas tree.
Eventually Mark spoke, fresh tears welling in his eyes even as the first words left his lips. ‘I don’t know why it had to happen that way. That way.’
Maria asked him what he meant.
‘Do you remember that phone call he got? The one right after he went to the hospital for the first time? The one when he found out?’
Maria nodded, then spoke slowly upon realizing Mark’s eyes were still locked on the slice of light on the carpet. ‘I remember, Mark.’
‘Do you remember how upset he was, and how he tried to hide it from us at first?’ Mark asked.
Maria nodded.
‘I don’t know why, I just keep thinking about all the time he spent getting ready to, you know…. And he was ready to go then, you know?… But then they told him he was going to be okay.’
Maria opened her mouth to speak but no words came out.
‘Things started going back to normal. He stopped taking the medication and going in to the…’, Mark trailed off, swallowed, then continued, ‘It was like it was a thing he was done with, forever in the past. Then it killed him… when he wasn’t ready anymore. Of course when he wasn’t ready anymore-’ Fresh tears rolled down Mark’s cheeks and his voice cracked.
Maria leapt from the couch and wrapped her arms around Mark. He didn’t hug her back. His fingernails dug into the arms of the leather chair. She hugged him tighter and tighter until he gave in and put his arms around her. He buried his face into her shoulder and sobbed until the slice of golden light on the carpet retreated with the downing of the sun.
The end snuck up on everybody. Them more than most.
A CALL CAME IN TO MARK'S CELLPHONE: Aunt Kim, the first voice he had heard other than Maria’s since the funeral. Mark just then remembered he was supposed to call her when they were ready to leave.
He readied an apology for not calling her sooner, but was cut off.
‘It’s not gonna happen,’ she said, regret in her voice, but also a tinge of relief. ‘I won’t be able to pick you and Maria up.’
‘Why not?’ He asked.
‘I have no way to get there now. Even if I did, I think it’s too dangerous for us to be out on the road at this point,’ she explained that some people had tried to break into her house, but settled on just stealing her car instead. ‘A small gang, they looked like. Four or five of them.’ She lived in a cottage style house in an extremely rural area, detached from the nearby vacation town of Brighton. She explained that this was the first time she had actually seen any of the rioting and looting that she kept reading about online.
/> Depending on which news outlet you turned to, the riots were either the downfall of civilization or they weren’t actually happening, an elaborate hoax, non-existent, a fabrication of left wing media manipulators. The same twisted rhetoric used to discredit global warming was now applied to civil unrest.
She continued, ‘The boys who took my car… they didn’t look all that bad. I think they felt bad about doing it. They looked hungry to be honest. They must’ve tried a lot of other places before they made it all the way out to me. You remember how far from the main road I am. I might’ve given them some food to go away if they weren’t armed.’
She spoke quickly, asking Mark how things were in their town. Without allowing time for an answer to her previous question, she asked if they felt safe, then again interrupted her own question to ask if they had been outside recently. Mark was taken aback by everything she said; Confused, oblivious to how dire the state of the outside world had gotten. He asked her what the hell was going on…
She told him to turn on the news.
With the call over, Mark went into Maria’s room where she had finally started packing for their move. He told her not to bother, then switched on the TV that hadn’t been fed power since the day before their father died. They cycled through all of the news stations.
The information on each channel seemed to conflict with the one before it. Some news outlets denied any issue, claiming everything was perfectly under control. Others were appropriately cataclysmic in their disposition and others had already gone off the air. Color bars filled the TV screen intermittently as Mark flipped past dead channels.
Unbeknownst to them, their own town of Bristol was already in a state of disarray. The town didn't have a high enough population for the same large-scale rioting the bigger cities saw, but it had its own appropriately sized chaos, growing outward like the concentric circles of a puddle rippling from a dropped stone. Some of their neighbors had silently fled town. A number of their classmates had already passed away quietly; some in chaotic accidents, others through direct acts of violence.
The Dubrek siblings ran to the kitchen. Mark pulled aside the curtains on one of the windows and they looked out at the street. Their house was on Spring Street, a side road just off of the tiny town’s main street. The houses were all built into the side of a hill with the next street over being a good 15 feet lower in elevation and the one behind about 10 feet higher. In a snowy enough winter, one could sled down three straight blocks.
Over and between the buildings in the distance stood the start of a mountain range. A large section of the snow mountain’s forest-clothing stood ablaze. Other plumes of smoke had rose from various points in the distance.
Bristol sat nestled amid mountains. If you walked far enough in any direction, chances are you would hit dense forest, followed by a steep and rocky incline. How long had it been since they’d looked outside? They wondered. Mark turned from the window and began ambling down the hall.
‘There’s Buddy.’ Maria said, still holding aside the window curtain. Mark returned to the glass and looked down at their neighbor coming up one of the wooden building-side staircases from the street below, a Blu-ray player, a stack of movies, and a bag of indiscernible looted goods tucked under one arm and a splitting axe held high in the other.
‘Jesus Christ.’ Mark mumbled to himself. He shook his head in disbelief, not just at Buddy but at the entire state of the world he was discovering. Maria tried to see if the head of Buddy’s axe was bloodied but couldn’t get a good look before he had run across the street and into his apartment beneath theirs. Maria made a mental note that Buddy had gone straight past their porch without so much as a glance over.
Mark stepped away from the window, turned in a circle and, unsure of where to go or what to do, leaned against the kitchen counter and slid down to a sitting position on the cold floor. He set his elbows on top of his bent knees and ran his fingers through his long hair. Maria continued watching through the window.
A few moments later, Buddy returned back outside, his arms now empty save for the axe which he clutched with both hands as he sprinted down the street and out of Maria’s sight.
THAT NIGHT Mark and Maria sat in the living room. They had spent the rest of the day coming to terms with the situation outside their front door. Political tensions had escalated higher than ever before. Anyone in a position of political power gave off the impression that they were either furious or in denial of the fact that they were furious. No one with opposing points of view could find their way through to working with each other and the resulting government shutdowns, that had become more and more frequent, further shook the faith-in-government of the American public. The macro scale of conflicts boiled down to pod vs pod. If they weren’t in your pod, then they were your enemy. Left wing vs right wing, Atheism vs Christianity vs Judaism, black vs white vs everyone who didn’t match your complexion or ideals. It wouldn’t be long before the sight of another living individual meant danger first, everything else second.
THEY HAD GONE through the kitchen and pantry and determined that if they ate conservatively, they could probably make what food they had last for a few more weeks. Their father had gone on a big holiday grocery run shortly before his expiration and the food provided by Aunt Kim had replenished the rest of their stock.
They sat close beside each other at the living room table and argued whether to stay or go. Maria wanted to try and make it to Aunt Kim’s house, Mark wanted to stay put and leave the apartment as little as possible.
‘We can’t just stay here.’
‘This is what’s safe. We don’t know what’s going on out there. People are acting crazy. We’ve gotta wait for things to calm down.’
‘So we’re supposed to just sit here until those crazy people try and force their way inside? Or until we run out of food and starve to death?’
‘I’ll go out and get more food when we get low. I’ll protect you if someone tries to come in here. I’ll take care of you, Maria.’
A distant siren suddenly seemed a good deal closer. Both siblings wondered how many telling sirens they had ignored in their grief powered exile. Maria pulled aside the curtain in front of the living room window and watched as an ambulance swerved its way up their road; its siren blaring and lights flashing, illuminating the fronts of all the houses on their dark street. The ambulance drove quickly and recklessly, the front left tire gone, sparks flying between the exposed rim and the road. Maria dropped the curtain and sat back down at the table.
They argued back and forth for the next couple of hours. The argument was the heated sort that other times might have ended with someone storming out of the room, but both were too afraid to leave the other’s side. They both felt the need to stay within touching distance, as if breaking line of sight meant they would never see each other again.
Eventually they settled on staying put, for a while at least. Mark had convinced her by hammering on the 120 mile distance between themselves and their aunt an entire state away, and the cold winter weather making any possible journey not just tiresome and difficult, but also extremely dangerous.
Over the course of the next two weeks, there was hardly a time when they weren’t in the same room. The first few nights they broke to sleep in their own rooms but they quickly turned to sleeping together in the living room; Maria on the couch and Mark on the floor atop a pile of pillows and blankets. Maria offered to take turns on the couch, but Mark declined. He was too tall for their short couch and would have to arch his legs over the end. Maria fit snugly between the couch arms.
Over the next few days, the sounds of not-too-distant gunshots became commonplace.
THE NEXT WEEK they awoke in the living room to the sight of snow falling heavier than any other time that winter. Maria kept her blanket wrapped around her shoulders, goosebumps speckling her skin. She wore a cotton shirt and fleece pajama bottoms. Mark wore the same baggy clothes he had for the last three days. The apartment felt significantly col
der than it had the night before. The heat in the apartment ran on oil and came from large metal radiators stationed in each room. Mark went over to feel the one in the living room and found it cold.
Their Dad used to order an oil refill once every few months and Mark was afraid the heat had run out for good. They knew that sometimes the old boiler in the basement just needed to be restarted, so they decided to head down and give it a try. Maria reminded Mark that the way to the basement went through a hallway of the farmhouse shared with Buddy. Mark looked around for a weapon.
He went through his dad’s room and found an old Louisville Slugger baseball bat once belonging to his Grandfather. The knob of the bat had several notches to mark his Grandfather’s minor league home runs and the cap had run flat on one side from where his father let it drag along the pavement when it was his favorite plaything as a child.
‘You should stay up here.’ Mark said, protesting her following.
Maria refused. ‘I’m with you no matter what.’ They stood by the door in the back of the kitchen that they had gone through all but six or seven times in their entire decade and a half of living there. Mark held the bat near the middle and had his other hand resting on the door’s lock. He repeated to Maria the importance of staying quiet, she rolled her eyes in response. She knew Mark was trying to stall. They stood by the door for several minutes, Mark failing to hide his fear. Finally, Maria got tired of waiting and reached for the lock herself.
‘Wait!’ Mark exclaimed in a hushed voice.
‘Well hurry up then, let’s get this over with. If we are out of oil, we need to figure out another way to stay warm.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘Or we need to go somewhere else.’
‘All right, enough of that. Let’s go.’
